November 19, 2012

Remember last week when I wrote that Republicans and conservatives need to fully absorb that the legacy media are their political opponents? Reuters blogger Felix Salmon gives us an excellent example of that today along with an equally stellar sample of the sort of douchebag tactics we can expect to see.

Earlier today, GQ published online an interview with Sen. Marco Rubio and one of the questions he took was "How old do you think the Earth is?" Here's Rubio's actual response:

I'm not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that's a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow. I'm not a scientist. I don't think I'm qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to answer that. It's one of the great mysteries.

I have my own issues with Rubio's response and I'll detail those in the next post. Unlike Salmon though, I won't be turning myself into a douchebag liar in the process. And make no mistake, that tweet with it's phony quote is a flat-out lie. Judging from the thread at that last link though, Salmon doesn't give a shit about that.

The point of this post is not to try to get Salmon to show any kind of professionalism in dealing with people with whom he disagrees, that would almost certainly be an exercise in futility. The point is simply to let people know that Felix Salmon is a hack "journalist" who is perfectly fine with serving you, the reader, with phony quotes. Trust him accordingly.

Oh, and one more thing. There's all sorts of talk about needing more civility in our political discourse, but a greater incivility than any name-calling is to deliberately distort and lie about your opponent's position. There are many ways that Salmon could have chosen to legitimately criticize Rubio's response, he chose the lie. I won't listen to one word about civility from him.